“I’m actually glad I’m running into you,” Josie went on, still giving him a sexy smirk. “I was going to bring you a coffee as a peace offering. We got off on the wrong foot.”
“Did we ever,” he mumbled, immediately blaming his dragon for the words. “I’m sorry I came off as such a prick.”
“Not a prick so much as a grumpy old man.”
He balked. “Old man?” he repeated, crossing his arms. He didn’t miss the way her eyes took in his bulging biceps.
“That’s right. What are you, anyway? A few hundred years old?”
He frowned at her, but she waved off his concern.
“I’ve been in your family’s safe, not to mention in this house. Only a shifter family who has been around for a long time can accumulate that much wealth. Besides, your mother told me.”
“Right. Well, we’re dragons. And you’re right. I am a few hundred years old.”
“I knew it,” she clapped her hands in victory. “Only an old man would grumble about high heels being a safety hazard.” Her mouth was quirked up in a smirk, and she winked at him.
The woman was teasing him.
And not just because she smelled divine and looked even better.
Nope.
She was teasing him, openly flirting with him. After he had been so horrible with her.
It’s because she is our mate. She will forgive a lot because you belong together.
“I can’t apologize enough,” he said before his dragon did something ludicrous, like actually lick her. “How can I make it up to you?”
“Go out with me,” Josie blurted.
York felt his eyebrows go all the way up. He was so surprised, he had to rub at them to make sure they hadn’t flown off on his dragon’s wings.
“Excuse me?” he asked, his voice a breathy rasp. It was difficult to talk when he was standing naked and fully erect in front of his mate.
Drop the towel, his dragon pleaded. Show her the goods. She won’t be able to resist us.
York tempered the desire, knowing full well it wouldn’t have the desired effect. Josie wasn’t going to take one look at his cock and beg him to give it to her.
Not that his dick wasn’t impressive. York was confident with his manhood. He was big and girthy, and he’d never had a complaint before. But this young woman worked for his mother. If he dropped the towel and offered Josie his goods, she might very well tattle on him to Johanna. Or Josie could call the cops. Indecent exposure was a thing.
You’re arguing with yourself again, his dragon stated, puffing out his chest in pride.
“I think we should go out,” Josie repeated.
York swallowed hard. “Oh? And what do you think we have in common?” He wasn’t being an ass, he was legitimately curious. Fate and his dragon were sure that Josie was his mate. If that was true, they had to have things in common.
It couldn’t just be that she was as sexy as she was sassy. There had to be more to the connection than that. With Annalise, it had been clear as day. They enjoyed doing the same things, and they could talk about everything under the sun.
“I don’t know. Don’t you want to find out?”
Fuck yeah, we do!
York smiled despite himself.
“Holy dimples!” Josie shouted. Before he knew what she was doing, she was walking around the counter. She cupped his head between her hands. “Do it again.”
He tried to disentangle himself from her. He had an erection to continue hiding. He grabbed the dishtowel and strategically placing it between them. Josie was relentless, and she tightened her grasp on his face.
“You’ve got dimples. I need to see them. Now.”
“No—”
York wasn’t able to finish his sentence. With one of her hands, Josie had reached out and was tickling his left side, just below his ribs. Her skin against his naked flesh made him cross-eyed for a second. At least, until his body registered that he was being tickled.
His laughter, loud and genuine, made his dimples reappear.
“Okay, not to go full asshole on you, but you should smile more. There is no reason in the world that those things shouldn’t be out all of the time. Don’t you know what dimples do? They make ladies—and some dudes—sigh. They make panties wet. They conjure up some real dirty thoughts.”
Then York was going to endeavor to smile every second he was around Josie.
Especially if it made her wet.
Chapter Seven
Josie
Fucking fuck.
For real, what in the fuck had she been thinking?
This was a pure disaster.
Her plan had been to get on York Warwick’s good side. Something must have short-circuited in her brain when she had seen the man half-naked. She had hardly been expecting to see him in only a towel, prancing around the brownstone like he owned the place.
Which he technically did.
Josie had ogled him like her life had depended on it. She’d asked him out.
That wasn’t even the worse of it. She had put her hands on him. She had cupped his face and had been seconds away from kissing him. York’s mouth was as tempting as the deep V lines that might as well have been an arrow to his dick. Josie’s cheeks burned with the memory that she had actually tickled him to see his dimples.
She had tickled. A. Damn. Grown. Man.
To see his dimples. To make him laugh. To find an excuse to touch him.
And now? She had to get ready for their date, which she had asked for.
It was a bad idea. Probably the worst idea she had ever had, and she had decided to get her nipple pierced when she was seventeen. When Gammy had found out? Yikes. On the scale of getting an underage body piercing and a losing her v-card to Sammy Waters in the playground on Halloween night of her senior year? This was pretty bad. It was somewhere in between.
Josie was blaming the abs. Maybe the ass. Possibly the eyes. Definitely the dimples.
Most likely? It was the whole York package that had made her go crazy for the man.
"Ugh,” she groaned out loud, with a head shake that made her teeth hurt. Now she was thinking about York’s package. Though she hadn’t seen the hardware, she imagined just how huge it must be. Josie was pretty sure she had seen the beginnings of an erection through the strategically placed dish towel.
With another shake of her head, Josie stared at all of the clothes she had laid out on the bed. What did one wear on a first date with a man you had every intention of stealing from? Was the floral mini-skirt too much? Maybe a nice pair of jeans would be better. Besides, her ass looked killer, encased in the blue denim.
In the end, she chose a flowing white summer dress, patterned with large purple flowers. Her purple heels would look amazing with it. The hem hit her just above the knee, putting her legs on display without shouting yes, I am wearing a purple silk thong, want to take it off of me with your teeth?
The image of York’s dimpled face doing just that accompanied Josie all the way to Central Park, where she was meeting him. She was trying very hard not to pace in place, glancing at her phone when she felt it.
The change in the air.
The way the atmosphere became electric.
She turned to see York making his way to her. He was wearing a nice pair of beige shorts, and his light blue, button-down shirt’s sleeves were rolled up his forearms. His green eyes were locked on hers as if she was his prey, and he was a hunter, zoning in on his dinner. She swallowed hard before forcing the air out of her lungs.